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Friday, 24 May 2013

Newbie series Part one: Building a Washing Regimin

Many of my followers may not be newbies, but I get many E-mails from people who have not yet started their hair care journey, so this series of posts will be for you. Follow my blog for follow ups of the newbie series to healthy hair care.

Building a washing regimin

So you want long healthy hair, you've found out that its possible but now what? How do you achieve this? Well the first thing I did, and the first thing I recommend for you guys to do is to create a regimin.
Something important to remember is that EVERYONES hair is different.

Just because this routine works for me, see here and a different routine works for her doesn't mean the same one will work for you. It's all about trial and error. Looking at other hair routines is always a good place to start.

Before, building your regimin I would recommend looking here, here and here. I know this seem like a lot of information but I recommend reading it/ looking over it over a few days.

Pre-pooing (Pre Shampooing)
When I first heard "pre-pooing" I was honestly quite disgusted, but honestly it has nothing to do with what you think it is! Pre-pooing is adding a product to your hair before shampooing and many claim this step is vital to hair health. But whats the point in adding things to your hair just to wash them out again?
Well when you are washing your hair its results in a lot of manipulation, this manipulation can cause damage. One way to prevent this damage is to "pre-poo" I would highly recommend using coconut oil to pre-poo. When pre-pooing I tend to saturate my hair in virgin coconut oil and leave it overnight. To learn more about this process read here.

Washing
Before we talk about products used during washing there is a few things you should know about it

The best time to detangle your hair is when it is covered in conditioner, this makes the hair 'slippery' and makes detangling easy. Try a cheap conditioner that you don't mind using a lot of.

Detangle with a wide tooth comb.

When shampooing only shampoo your scalp, shampoo is quite drying so you do not need to shampoo your ends and the mid of your hair. Once your scalp is shampooed the remainder of the shampoo will travel down your hair and get rid of any dirt.

When washing do not pile all your hair on the top of your head like on a herbal essences advert, that is a sure way to cause tangles and it is excessive manipulation.

Once your hair is washed don't scrub and rub your hair with a cotton towel, instead blot your hair carefully. Rather than using a cotton towel use a T-shirt instead or a micro fibre towel which are both more gental on your hair

Before blow drying wait till you hair is almost dry.

Shampoo's:

There are many types of shampoos, including moisturising shampoos and clarifying/ chelating shampoo's. When choosing a shampoo I recommend avoiding sulphates. Personally, I find sulphates irritate my skin so I go as far as not using sulphates in my body wash as well. However, for some sulphates are not a big deal so it may require some trial and error.

Leona Lewis

Detangling Conditioner

This is the conditioner I use to detangle, it normally consists of something like tresemme naturals, or
anything cheap I can find. I put it in my hair after its shampooed. Some will choose to re-shampoo after this step but I choose not to.

Deep conditioner

The most important part of your routine in my opinion. There are two types, protein or moisturising deep conditioner. As you would have seen in the video that I linked to at the start of this post, protein and moisturising deep conditioners will do different things to your hair and will lead to different results. This is the most amazing post all about deep conditioning, in fact I'm not going to say much about it just because that post is full of important information. This is a fantastic video as well if you're all bored of reading. I also recommend having a look at her other videos, they are very informative.

Many people will have different types of deep conditioners, moisturising, hard protein conditioners and light protein conditioners. This means you can use different conditioners for different reasons.

Leave in conditioner

Importantly, if you are planning on using heat on your hair i.e. flat ironing, curling etc make sure you only use leave in products that are meant for use with heat. I'm sure we're all familiar with the video of the girl burning off her hair, if not it's here. The reason she burnt her hair off was most likely due to products which are not suitable to be used with heat, leading to them combusting and burning off her her. If you're using heat your most important leave-in should be a heat protectant, which can help keep hair healthy.

If you're not using heat on your hair just go for a regular leave-in of your choice, preferably one with water as a top ingredient.

2 comments:

Hi Chantelle, just reading your blog and its great and very informative. Coming from a white background I have had no education on my hair heritage and how best to deal with it. So from an early age I have been using chemicals and glued extensions! Any way, recently I have decided to go for the big chop and trying to do as much research as I can to have the best experience! So my main question would be should I be shampooing my bald head as this will also be on my hair ends? Or just stick to co washing and protein until growth comes through? Thanks a lot